Do you agree there should be a separate forum for private giveaways and giveaway trains?
While i do agree sometimes it look a bit "spammy", i think the whole purpose of making forum GA is for the people reading the forum. Making a separate tab would attract all kind of people not interested in the forum but knowing that there are games specifically here (defeating the whole purpose of private GA).
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Exactly this. If they would make a separate forum category just for giveaways, then one might as well just make those public.
A lot of threads with giveaways aren't about those giveaways, they're about people informing us about some kind of celebration, achievement or real life situation and they post a giveaway or several because they're nice. Therefore those threads fit more in General than they would in Giveaway category anyway.
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Here are some of the titles, you tell me which forum they belong to:
And these are only from the top threads (updated within the last hour)
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Not necessarily since they would have to physically click into the general forum to read through all the titles of the forums. A big blue link that says, "Giveaways" is more likely to attract that type of SG user than a big blue link that says, "General".
The thought process that many users have for making private giveaways in the forums is that the people who actually get to their giveaway are more likely to be active members of the SG community rather than some random user who is just here to enter giveaways. Therefore, it is seen as more of a reward for participating in the community. If you have a big blue link that says, "Giveaways", more of the people who are specifically here for giveaways and have no intention of participating in the community will see that and enter the giveaway... which goes against the intentions of the giveaway creator.
So I really can see why many people would not want to have this sub-forum since it would make their giveaway much more visible to the public. Anyway... that's my whole spiel on the topic.
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If you mean adding a new category intended for giveaways, then I don't see anything wrong with that. I think it would actually be worthwhile, since a lot of the forum posts are giveaways themselves.
Obviously, this is not to say that every thread with a giveaway has to go there, but if you're making a train and that's it, it would be a good place to put it.
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GA and GA trains are frequently a nice bonus for those who read the forum. I personally like to include them with most of my threads, but rarely announce them in the title. I wouldn't want my post to be relegated to a specific sub-forum just because they contain GAs, so my vote is No.
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Here are some of the titles, you tell me which forum they belong to:
And these are only from the top threads (last post within the last hour)
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I think that "A bunch of GAs for my whitelist" is a specific case. While I don't have really any problem with GA posts, these one make me angry because they are maybe concerning 1% of the forum (or the person has a huge WL) and bothering the 99%.
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I don't really see how this is related to what I posted. Of course there are users who choose to mention that there are GAs in the title, but this is their prerogative. A user can decide to mention it, not mention it, or edit the OP at any point in time and switch from one to the other. This still doesn't mean that they should be forced to post these threads to a specific sub-forum.
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I think there is a difference between the topics mdk is talking about an yours. ;)
In your topic there is some "content" beside the giveaway itself.
But there are also a lot of topics that look like
"Hi,
Train
Potato"
There is no talk or anything in it. It's just "bump", "ty", "bump". And that's fine! But if you want to check out some Community-Discussions and stuff from "general" you most of the time see "traintopics".
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I didn't even mention posts about other matters that include a giveaway. Posts that include giveaways for the sake f giveaways are almost 50% of the "General" forum.
They should get their own forum, so they're both easier to find, and they don't spam the general forum.
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I suppose it would be
Actual content + GA = General
Just a train = GA subforum
I see nothing wrong with that myself... kinda wondering why there's such an opposition (they definitely don't seem to post about it here en masse why not, so... what?).
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If someone wanted to post their giveaways in a place for everyone to easily find they would make public giveaways.
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Well, I'm a newbie. Wondered why it wasn't a thing when I joined, but now I say no? Having GAs in General or Off-Topic kinda encourages you to check the other discussions, like those about issues, or for asking questions, or puzzles -- it promotes overall participation?
And threads like 'Giveaways for peace', sure, they have a collection of private GAs, but they also try to spread a message. Heaps o' people might already not care, but putting those in some new category just for GAs would make people even less likely to take the time to read 'em. I think.
TL;DR: No? Some giveaway threads come with content, and even those that don't encourage people to check threads with content. Or something.
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Eh, it's more like -- SG is a giveaway site first, before everything else. Add a new category, and people who usually read long threads would still read 'em, but people who are just casually browsing for the GAs won't have much reason to spend time checking outside the category. Just think it'd divert attention from the threads that are actually pretty interesting/important, which would be a shame :(
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People casually browsing for the GAs, already only browse "General".
They don't browse "Off-Topic", "Announcments", "Let's play together", etc.
So all these forums are already in this position.
Also, if a person is casually browsing for GAs, and he accidentally enters a very interesting discussion with lots of text and lots of replies, is not going to stay and read. It's not what he's there for. He will close it within 3 seconds.
As I see it, "General" thread is for general discussions. People who want to discuss general stuff should be able to do so without needing to sift through all the unrelated (i.e. trains/giveaways) posts.
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I donβt really see a problem since the main functionality of the site is to giveaway. Because of this I donβt think it would bother most members. Opposite from some arguments, I think giveaways also fuel more traffic towards general threads than they would recieve independently. One thing I donβt understand is people posting whitelist giveaways on forum unless they are looking to expand their whitelist.
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I say we go back to the Wild West of NO CATEGORIES! Hβyaa!
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Iβm convinced he just goes on Yelp and TripAdvisor to bullshit these entries now.
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Something that isn't broken doesn't need fixing! :O
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I think I might be a weirdo, but I come to the forum from time to time just to browse discussion topics and news about stuff the community is currently thinking about. Having to search for the actual discussion threads from the simple giveaway threads is a bit annoying. So I would actually like a separate category for those threads instead.
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About 50% of the General forum is threads about giveaways, wishlist giveaway, private giveaways and giveaway trains.
It seems to me that's large enough traffic (in one of the busiest forums in SteamGifts) to warrant a separate forum of it's own.
Here is an example list of titles from the "General" forum, all updated within the last hour:
EDIT:
Some recurring ideas I see here:
Well why do you need to "force" people do anything? If someone is looking for giveaways, let him have his giveaways, he's not here to read about peace or world hunger. And if post is not interesting enough on it's own, well maybe people just wont read it, instead of forcing people to "read" (nobody looking for free stuff is going to actually read it) by maintaining the illusion there might be a giveaway hidden there.
Well if someone it trying to "hide" his giveaway, he wouldn't put it in a forum almost 50% of which are giveaways, and will not include in the name of his post the words "giveaway", "train", "lvl", etc.
These are not posts trying to hide, these are posts trying to be found.
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